Hi folks,
My thermometer is lying to me at the moment (it says 40° but I really don’t believe it), so I decided to come in from the shop and thaw out my fingers for a bit. A little history: my shop has grown from literally a chop-saw on a picnic table to a fairly well equipped (if cold) small barn over the past 5 years. Before I built my shop, I shared shop space with my mentor for a few years, after building stuff in my yard, working out of the garden shed. I’ve done the typical ‘buy a tool when you need it’ thing, and for the most part that has worked out pretty well. I have a good solid core of tools and a fair supply of lumber on hand. I’ve always been great at starting a project, but not so good at finishing them however. SO it being early in the calendar year, I am going to try something new: A Plan for the year in the shop.

January is going to be simple, it is 1/3 of the way done, I have a short window of above average temperatures outside so between now and the end of that unseasonably warm weather I’m going to do a massive clean up and sort/organize. If I get enough done I’ll try and turn some handles for my new Thompson lathe tools, but I’m not going to count on that happening. I left a Huge mess out in the shop getting the cutting board blitz done.

February and early March I suspect are going to be very quiet out there. I’ll mostly be doing project planning and research unless we have a warmer winter than I suspect we are going to.

Later March will be when I will be getting the supplies for the projects, and I’ll be starting in on them as I can time and money wise. Also, working on stocking up for my cutting board shop: Artisan Boards

April: Once the Lake subsides in our backyard from the snow run off, I’ll be out in the shop as often as I can be… continuing to work on the projects from February’s planning sessions. Also: Get a sub-panel run out to the shop.

May: This is when things are going to get ‘interesting’. I’m going to try and do a few major projects in May: 1) build three new Doors for the shop. One a ‘man’ door which will go on the long side of the shop facing the house. I”ve got the doorway framed in the shop , I just have never built one for it, I’ve always used the large pair of doors on the end of the building instead. THe other two doors will be replacement doors for the pair in the end of the building. I’m planning on them having large windows in the upper half, and screens so I can open them up for cross ventilation during the spring & summer. 2) Along with the new doors, I also will be building a wrap around deck and new entrance stairs to the shop. That’s always been on my list of things to do, but never made it to the top of the list. 3)build a bump out on the North end of the shop for the ‘New’ dust collector I’ve got sitting down in VA

June : Major Production run of cutting boards and other wood items for Artisan Boards plus build a new Deck for the house.

July: support a major house renovation project; new kitchen and bath, plus trim carpentry throughout the house. More cutting boards…

August: hopefully wrap up the reno project, prep for september. still more cutting boards

September: If funds and plans coincide: Move the shop building. My shop sits on concrete pads and a stone bed, I’m going to contact a ‘camp jacking’ company and get a quote for relocating from the center of the yard to a corner of the yard, giving the family back the majority of the back yard. Now I just have to convince the CFO that it can be done. I know I should do that before I build the steps and new deck, but I just don’t see the funds happening much before September.

October: Christmas Gifts

November: You guessed it LOTS of Cutting boards

December: clean up from November.

I’ll be printing that out and posting it in the shop for the occasional laugh.

disclaimer: this plan is subject to modification at any point in the year… and is carved in Jello to begin with.

Hi gang,
as expected things have been extremely quiet out in the shop this past month. More because of work and being extremely ‘beat’ when I got home. I have been out of work since last summer, but that has all changed in the pasts couple of weeks. I had picked up a seasonal job with Fedex Ground. Since then I have been hired for a local school bus company, and also a new contractor job which I haven’t officially ‘gotten’, but feel I have an excellent opportunity to get word on this Monday. The bus job seems to be decent so far, but the pay will need some ‘help’ in the long run.

On a very positive note, I just got an order for two large cutting boards to be shipped to a former co-worker by the end of next month. (I quoted with some lead time since winter is still here). I will be making a tool upgrade before I can complete that order though… my aging planer has broken down twice in recent months, so I’m going to upgrade to a new 13” from Steel City tool works, a helical head unit. This will go well with the ‘New’ DC I brought back from my parents’ house in VA. I checked and the unit has a 2.5” dust port, which matches up nicely with the Shopsmith DC-3300’s hose.

Now if it would just warm up to the 40’s on average during the day I’ll be happy.